ABSTRACT
States are made up of constructed organisations that are supposed to deliver services to their populations, especially their citizens. The population hires and instructs agents – political elites – to provide them with goods and services they badly need. Besides safety, the principal may want his/her agents to deliver rights, especially human rights. Polities differ in terms of how their institutions restrain the political elites to respect the requirements of rule of law. The modern state is highly active in terms of its many programmes or policies. Although government constrains people’s activities in many ways, it is hardly defensible to speak of the state as if it had a life of its own. The organism model treats the state as a coherent unit with independent life and its own purpose(s). This is reification or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, treating the state as if it were an entity besides the citizens of the state. The state comprises many organisations at various levels of government that operate a huge variety of services. Basically, there is a principal-agent problem in the relationship between the citizens and their state, because government, although proclaiming that it enhances the public interest, may pursue a variety of objectives corresponding more or less to citizen preferences. The famous slogan from the French revolution – Liberté, égalité and fraternité – may be interpreted as an attempt to define this principal-agent game in politics.
